Figs go figment?
I almost fall into the figment of my imagination, if I didn’t shoot the photos on Sept.14.
It was my son Jack’s birthday — -this is how I remember it. While waiting for him and his mom to go to the birthday dinner, I stepped out to the backyard. I noticed the only fig tree had got dozens of fruits the size of walnut. Another harvest year, though a harvest is not always a pleasant outcome for this fig tree. Last year the rampant fruits invited tons of Japanese beetles –their love to figs far beyond me. On every single fig perched these glaring green insects in family size. Before I found the weapon, the garden was already occupied by dashing beetles and the smell of rotten figs. I scrambled to get Sevin Insect Killer and sprayed it. It killed the beetles but not the smell –most fruits were already belly-open. I cut off all the branches hung with sticky, dead figs. We didn’t eat one single fig last year.
I was glad this year that I could stifle the fire before it got wild. Getting Sevin from Home Depot, I gave the fig tree a thorough shower. And I must add the Home Depot’s sales algorithm had got it right by putting the giant bags of beetle trap next to the Sevin Insect Killer –I grabbed one of them when checking out. Installing the trap 30 feet next to the tree, I was convinced that we would have a smell-free season and the sweetie figs should be devoured by human beings.
One week later, when I came to the tree, a most bizarre scene struck me: the figs completed vanished. No dead fruits on the branches and ground. What struck me the most was that some spots where I clearly remember I saw the little fruits now looked as smooth as baby’s skin –no sign of the remnant. If some weird critter had poached them they must be a smart breed. For a moment I doubted I was in the figment of my imagination, until I checked the photos I took a few days ago and the Sevin spray bottle and the whirling beetle trap 30 feet apart. They were all there fair and square. Running around the tree for many rounds, I finally found a tiny hint of evidence. Some fig flesh crumbs scattered on the surface of one of the leaves –the attack of the early birds, or early beetles. I saw them too on Sept. 14 when I took the pictures.
What are my darn figs? The Sevin was not supposed to dissolve the figs like the ghost sailors dissolved by sandstorms in the Pirates of the Caribbean. Plus, where are the dead beetles? I went to check the beetle trap. Getting my face to the mouth of the bag, a weird sweet odor tickled my nose –the smell that is supposed to entice the beetles into the bag and kill them. No dead beetles. A couple of broken twigs falling from the apricot tree it was hanging on……Then a view almost knocked me over: a dead lizard whose grave eyes stared right into mine. I have never been this close to a lizard in my life, not to mention a dead one.
The whole scene only added up to the aura of a Shining movie. It became my new haunt in the next few days, along with the pandemic and my wife’s appendectomy surgery. I searched on google –I am not alone! I found one post on houzz.com seven years ago. The guy asked almost the same question –only short of the dead lizard. He got a bunch of answers, ranging from birds, possums, cats, to even human culprits. But I guess I am the only one — seven years apart, who truly understands what he was talking about. “I didn’t see any on the ground — -the branches were picked so clean.”
But I have no answer.
Two months have passed, the fig tree still growing vigorously. But still no sign of figs. The giant yellow trap is still hanging 30 feet apart. Inside lays a dead lizard. Record high temperature in SoCal this late summer has roasted it into a twig shape, mixed with other falling ones. But I never miss it. Its wide-open eyes, getting bigger as the body shrinks, stare right at me whenever I check in.
